BlackBerry: businesses enthusiastic for BB10

Research In Motion claims more than 1,600 North American businesses have
registered for a training program for the forthcomng BB10 handsets and
software.

8:37AM GMT 17 Jan 2013

Of the registered customers, more than 1,000 have already begun using the BlackBerry 10 Ready program since its introduction in early December, said Bryan Lee, RIM’s senior director of enterprise accounts. The customers include Fortune 500 companies, law firms, schools, universities, retailers and government agencies, he said.

“We’re very encouraged by the participation of the types of customers,” Lee said in a phone interview. The companies are expected to be the first adopters once the phones are commercially available, he said.

RIM will debut the first of the BlackBerry 10 models at an event on January 30, before putting them on sale in February and March. The stock has more than doubled since late September on rising optimism that BlackBerry 10 will help RIM win back market share from rivals such as Apple.

Shares of the Waterloo, Ontario-based company rose 1.8 percent to $14.74 at the close in New York. Howeever, it lost subscribers for the first time in the latest quarter, as the global number of BlackBerry users dipped to 79m.

The company continues to buy itself more time, said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial. "It doesn't mean [Blackberry] 10 will gain traction. A lot of people said 10 would be DOA, but I don't think that's going to be the case," he said.

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Jefferies analyst Peter Misek called the latest results better than expected, noting that RIM added a significant amount of cash and now has $2.9bn.

Misek also called it a positive development that RIM said there would not be another delay to BlackBerry 10.

"The success or failure of this company will be on BlackBerry 10," Misek said.

One of the goals of the business training is to integrate the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software that RIM offers to corporate clients with their own information-technology systems, Lee said.

RIM said in its 2012 annual report that it had more than 250,000 BlackBerry Enterprise servers deployed around the world. Lee didn’t have figures on the scale of BlackBerry 10 training outside North America.

RIM is targeting its “whole base” to sign up for BB10 training, he said. “Obviously we want get to our existing customers and make sure we shout this from the rooftops.”